OPINION:
Once again, Milo is being muzzled.
Milo Yiannopoulos, of former Breitbart fame, has been set in the Berkeley mayor’s Democratic crosshairs for the offense of wanting to speak at the noted college campus — once again, proving the absolute intolerance of the left for all things politically different.
“I obviously believe in the freedom of speech,” said Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin, taking a quick breath before explaining how he nonetheless doesn’t believe in the freedom of speech for Milo, Mercury News reported.
And here’s his excuse: “But there is a line between freedom of speech and then posing a risk to public safety.”
He was referring to the possibility of violent protesters, like antifa thugs, making an appearance at the upcoming Yiannopoulos speech.
OK. But how is Yiannopoulos — an author, a writer, a conservative speaker, a gay activist — responsible for crowd security?
He isn’t. For that, there are police. Sadly, Arreguin believes the solution to staving off possible riots is to cancel offensive speakers — not, say, hire more police.
Not, say, arresting the perpetrators of violence.
And this, from UC Berkeley, the widely touted birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. It’s a trend of late, it seems, to boot conservatives from the Berkeley stages.
Yiannopoulos was due to talk there earlier this year, but school officials canceled his appearance after violent protesters went nuts, setting fires and bashing properties to the tune of $100,000 or so in damages.
Now, the student group Berkeley Patriot’s invited Yiannopoulos to try again in the coming weeks. And Arreguin is raising objections.
“That is where we have to really be very careful,” he said, “that while protecting people’s free speech rights, we are not putting our citizens in a potentially dangerous situation and costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing the windows of businesses.”
The problem with Arreguin’s line of logic, though, is this: He may say he’s protecting free speech rights. But he’s not at all protecting free speech rights. He’s rather shielding violent thugs from prosecution, and in so doing, punishing the innocent.
The mayor could prepare for Yiannopoulos’s appearance by scheduling more police to patrol. He could prepare by issuing no-nonsense proclamations to would-be protesters that violence would not be tolerated and violators of this policy would be swiftly arrested and prosecuted.
Instead, he’s taking the politically expedient route — the one that saves his Democratic self from having to potentially cross those on the left who might take offense at Yiannopoulos.
And in so doing, he’s chopping up the First Amendment and spitting out its guaranteed protections for freedom of speech and press and assembly, one conservative speaker at a time.
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